URLs du Jour

28 A large population is a king’s glory,
but without subjects a prince is ruined.

"I'm a prince!"

"Yes. Well, exactly how many subjects do you have, Prince?"

"Well, um…"

"Uh huh. You're ruined! I read it in Proverbs!"

<voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good
news, everyone</voice>: An excerpt from Jonah
Goldberg's new book
Suicide
of the West is up at NR, and it's apparently free
even to lowly non-subscribers. On the astounding fact of
capitalistic modernity:

Virtually every objective, empirical measure that capitalism’s
critics value improved with the emergence of Western
liberal-democratic capitalism. Did it happen overnight? Sadly, no.
But in evolutionary terms, it did.

Among economists and anthropologists, this is “settled science.” Economists left and right might bicker over minor details, but they agree that poverty is man’s natural environment. As economist Todd G. Buchholz puts it, “For most of man’s life on earth, he has lived no better on two legs than he had on four.” Nobel Prize–winning economist Douglass C. North and his colleagues write in Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History that “over the long stretch of human history before 1800, the evidence suggests that the long-run rate of growth of per capita income was very close to zero.” Economic historian David S. Landes is not exaggerating when he writes, “The Englishman of 1750 was closer in material things to Caesar’s legionnaires than to his own great-grandchildren.” For roughly 7,500 generations, everywhere in the world — ancient China and Rome, medieval Europe and Aztec-era Mexico — the average person lived on the equivalent of $3 per day.

In one of the eye-rolling events of the past few days, President
Trump has signalled his willingness to, um, revisit his decision to
pull the US out of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP).
I.e., attempt to unbreak the dish he tossed on the floor. At
NR, Veronique de Rugy points out:
Rejoining
TPP Won’t Be Easy. There are a lot of hurdles. But the bottom
line:

One final note, I don’t know much about international negotiations
but I know that there is a reason why we tell our kids not be
obnoxious in their dealing with others, even when they think they
have the upper-hand or even if they believe they will never need
other kids again. Nasty behaviors may come to bite you you know
where at some point. This may be one of those moments for America.
We, the people, may learn that painful lesson once again. Will the
White House learn it too?

The attack commences without two fundamental elements of any hostile engagement against another nation: authorization from Congress, and a clear understanding of the mission's aims. These are not mere technicalities, regardless of how often they have been brushed aside by various chief executives in the name of expediency.

For residents of New Hampshire CD1: Yes, of course Carol Shea-Porter signed
the letter. She wasn't in Congress in 2013, so I won't speculate on
her hypocrisy.

New Hampshire Commie Public Radio answers the perennial
question:
What Is The Free State Project?
(brought to us via the crack Google LFOD News Alert Team). It's very
nuts and bolts (or, you might say, fruits and nuts) about the inner
stresses of the FSP, and the tactics of the anti-FSP folks too. For
example, there's a movement to "out" current or former members of
the FSP who run for political office.

Yes: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Free State
Project?"

It’s a question that rubs Carla Gericke the wrong way, which isn’t
surprising. Carla stepped down from the Free State Project in 2016
and is now running for state senate for the second
time.

"It seems very McCarthey-esque," she told me. "I mean, I could break
down the Democratic Party into all kinds of little nuanced
groups...maybe I'll send out a thing that asks, you know, 'Are you a
socialist?'"

In addition to running for state Senate, Carla is now heading the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence. Their
mission is to “educate citizens on the benefits of the Live Free
or Die state peacefully declaring its independence and separating from the federal government of the United States.”

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